Aum cultist sentenced to five years in prison in Japan

This handout file picture, released by Tokyo's Metropolitan Police department on June 4, 2012 shows Naoko Kikuchi, a former member of the doomsday cult Aum Supreme Truth in Tokyo. A former member of the Aum Supreme Truth cult, who spent 17 years on the run after the 1995 nerve gas attack on Tokyo, was sentenced on Monday to five years in prison over a separate crime. -- PHOTO: AFP

TOKYO (AFP) - A former member of the Aum Supreme Truth cult, who spent 17 years on the run after the 1995 nerve gas attack on Tokyo, was sentenced on Monday to five years in prison over a separate crime.

The Tokyo District Court handed the sentence to Naoko Kikuchi, 42, for her role in a parcel bombing at the Tokyo metropolitan government in 1995 which seriously injured one official.

Kikuchi, who had been one of only two remaining members of the Aum Supreme Truth doomsday cult at large, was arrested in June 2012. Less than two weeks later, the final fugitive was also arrested.

Kikuchi was exempted from prosecution for the 1995 nerve gas attack on Tokyo's subway that killed 13 people and injured thousands of others with sarin, first developed by the Nazis.